The Internet revolution reached the top level of world leadership yesterday when Facebook pioneer Mark Zuckerberg met with President Nicolas Sarkozy on the closing day of the first “e-G8” summit.

The 27-year-old American founder of the social networking site – on which Sarkozy himself has a page – visited the Elysee palace between the President’s meetings with the Cabinet and the Japanese Prime Minister.

The encounter came on the sidelines of the “e-G8”, which on its second day was fast becoming a face-off between the powers that be, big business and web rebels.

Sarkozy kicked off the summit of top online and media barons on Tuesday, hailing their “Internet revolution” but warning them that some degree of government regulation was inevitable to avoid “democratic chaos.”

Google’s executive chairman Eric Schmidt hit back by warning governments to “be careful about regulating the Internet” for fear of choking its potential, while web freedom group Access Now petitioned against Sarkozy’s stance.

“After the first day of discussions at the so-called ‘e-G8 forum’, President Sarkozy’s disastrous design for the Internet has become glaringly apparent,” said a statement on Wednesday from campaign group Access Now.

“The world’s most developed economies (the G8) are poised to impose strict copyright enforcement and heavy-handed government regulation of the Internet,” it added, citing leaks of drafts of the e-G8 final declaration.

Zuckerberg left the Elysee without commenting to the media but was due to address the forum later Wednesday.

The e-G8 aims to draw up a declaration for the Group of Eight Leaders who meet in Deauville, northwestern France, today and tomorrow, with discussions covering sensitive issues such as online copyright and censorship.